The Hill: Lawmakers turned over gifts after secretly funded trip to Azerbaijan
Lawmakers who took a trip secretly funded by the government of Azerbaijan turned over jade earrings, tea sets, silk scarves, woven rugs and other gifts to the government after a watchdog report called the trip improper, The Hill reports http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/business-a-lobbying/283682-lawmakers-turned-over-gifts-after-trip.
The list of gifts returned to the General Services Administration (GSA), which was obtained by The Hill through a Freedom of Information Act request, fills in more details about the trip to a 2013 conference in the Azerbaijan capital of Baku.
According to the source, in all, nine current member of Congress and 32 staff members attended the conference, each receiving thousands of dollars’ worth of gifts, according to the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE). Some of the lawmakers also went to Turkey after the conference in Baku and received additional gifts on that stop.
The OCE report on the trip was submitted to the House Ethics Committee on May 8, 2015, but was leaked to The Washington Post, which revealed the details of the report days later.
The watchdog said Texas-based nonprofits filed false statements saying they were paying for the trip, when, in reality, the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic, known as Socar, helped fund the conference and trips by funneling $750,000 to the nonprofit corporations.
Socar has denied all wrongdoing and said the nonprofit involved in helping lawmakers make arrangements, the Assembly of the Friends of Azerbaijan, failed to follow disclosure rules.
Roughly a week before the House Ethics Committee released its report detailing its findings in July 2015, members of Congress who had taken the trip began returning the gifts they had received.
Reps. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.), Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.), Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-N.M.) and Rubén Hinojosa (D-Texas) all turned over gifts to the House clerk, who then handed them over to the GSA in October 2015, according to records obtained by The Hill.
Other gifts from the Azerbaijan trip that were returned include paperweights, pens, leather diaries, a DVD box set about the president of Azerbaijan and two rugs, one large and one small. Multiple lawmakers reported that the small rug appeared in their hotel rooms during the conference.